


I Don't Practice Cup Sangria

by SecretGeniusShittyKnight (augopher)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Coming Out, Drunken Confessions, Drunken sex, Engagement, Love Potion/Spell, M/M, Mentioned/Implied depressed Holster, Mutually Oblivious Pining, NHL Player Adam Birkholtz, Roommates Holster and Ransom, cup magic, did I say Cup Magic?, dubious consent due to magic...kind of, sort of, tumblr prompt fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 08:59:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7526530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/augopher/pseuds/SecretGeniusShittyKnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Seattle Schooners have won the Stanley Cup, and how does Holster choose to celebrate his day with the trophy? By inviting Ransom drinking cocktails out of it with curly straws. But little do they know there are strange powers at work in that cocktail recipe, strange and wonderful powers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Don't Practice Cup Sangria

**Author's Note:**

> So I mentioned that there is magically related dub-con. It's a bit gray area here, because Jack does say the magic doesn't make them do anything they don't already want to. It's an inhibition lowerer, so to speak. However, if you are concerned that you might find this triggering, I suggest a pre-reader.
> 
> This was a prompt fill on tumblr that got long, requesting the following:  
> Holsom with love potion and the lines of dialogue, “I knew you’d be too chicken” and "One of these days, I’m going to say no to your plans.”
> 
> I do not own the characters. They are the work of Ngozi Ukazu from her webcomic, Check, Please!

 

It was Holster’s turn to skate with the cup, holding it high over his head, the corners of his lips pulled up tight in an elated way that showed off every one of his massive teeth. Okay, so they weren’t massive. He had quite a nice smile; Ransom had to admit he was smitten with it. It was just easier to deal with the way he was hopelessly in love with his best friend and roommate if he pretended to be offended by the simplest things about Holster’s appearance.

In hindsight, maybe he should have picked aspects of Holster’s personality to find fault with, because Ransom was loath to admit, that he loved staring at Holster, often catching himself daydreaming while gazing at the object of his affections when he should have been studying for the boards. But Holster’s devotion to meme culture and pop music...that was another story entirely.

Still, it was hard not to find himself smiling along with everyone on ice as the Schooners celebrated their Stanley Cup victory. Only in his fourth year in the big leagues (after two miserable ones in the minors. Ransom had been on the end of one too many Skype calls at odd hours of the night with Holster looking dejected, sad, and lonely. He’d learn months later, that it was more than that. Holster had sought counseling for depression, and Ransom kicked himself for being so far away and unable to be there for his best friend in person), Holster had solidified his place on the team. Now, he wore that ‘A’ on his sweater proudly.

Holster skated up to him, not bothering to slow to a stop before bumping into him. Ransom’s sneakers not having too much in the way of purchase on the ice, stumbled backward. For a split second, the thought of dropping the cup in order to catch him flashed across Holster’s face. Only Ransom’s panicked head shake stopped him from committing hockey sacrilege. Luckily, for his sake,  Ransom backed into Koskonen (or Costco to the team), Holster’s team captain. He offered up an apology and received a high five for his efforts.

“You did it, bro!” Ransom shouted, one arm around Holster’s waist in an awkward half-hug.

Holster followed up the hug with a fist bump. “I know! I can’t believe it! So glad you could be here for it!”

The look on Holster’s face confused him; it was not one Ransom had seen before. Overly fond, warm and open, Holster looked, for lack of a better word....happy. Honestly and completely happy. The sight of which was enough to turn Ransom into a pile of goo right there on the ice.

 

***

 

Ransom walked into the condo he shared with Holster in downtown Seattle. Okay, shared was a bit of a stretch. It was Holster’s condo, and Ransom just happened to live there, having taken a residency position in the Rainy City solely to be able to be closer to Holster when he was called up to the pros. _Wow, pathetic much?_ Ransom scolded his inner judgmental self.

He was prepared for a long night of studying, which was interrupted with Holster sashaying into the living room, waltzing with the Stanley Cup.

His face lit up when he saw Ransom. “Ransypoo, bro of my life, you’ll never guess what today is.”

“Hmm. Gee. That’s a tricky one. Is it Betty White’s birthday?”

Holster stopped dead in his tracks. “Why else you think I buy a cake every year on January 17th? Wrong. Guess again.”

“Tina Fey’s birthday?”

“Ransy, that was in May. I made lemonade and we watched _Mean Girls_.”

Oh yeah. That _was_ tradition. “Helen Mirren’s birthday?”

“Good guess. That’s next week.”

“I don’t know. You’ve stumped me.”

Holster’s fingers drummed on the silver trophy. “Notice something shiny in my hands?”

“Is that some sort of drinking chalice?” For a moment, Ransom wondered how long he could keep up the guise of not recognizing the Cup.

“It’s my day with the cup. Wanna know what we did?”

“We?”

Holster placed his hands on the side of the trophy as though he was covering invisible ears. “Shhh. It’ll hear you. No. First, we went to Goldberg’s for breakfast.”

“Oh yeah? What did you get today?”

“Challah French toast AND a lox and bagel with extra capers. Holy fuck I missed carbs.”

“Mmm. Everything about that, except the capers, sounds delicious.”

“You have no idea. Then, I took it up on the Great Wheel. That was cool. You should see the selfie I posted on Twitter we me and the Cup. I look pretty hot for a change. No horse teeth in the way.”

Ransom opened his mouth to protest that Holster, did, in fact, look hot most of the time, but closed it almost as quickly.

“Then, we came back here and marathoned my must see tearjerkers.”

“In your underwear?” It was hard _not_ to notice Holster’s scandalously tiny lemon print boxer shorts, his own homage to his favorite TV show.

“Oh yes. There is only one way to cry while watching _Fried Green Tomatoes,_ and _that_ my dearest friend, is in one’s underwear.  I also have a celebratory beverage chilling in the fridge. Made it myself.”

Ransom groaned. “Man, I’d love to, but I really need to study. I don’t think I can handle needing to take step three of the boards twice.”

Holster pouted. “When’s your exam?”

“In a month.”

He nodded for a moment, considering Ransom’s words. “Well then I think you can handle one night of drunken, binge-watching debauchery.”

“I don’t know, Holtzy.”

Holster set down the Cup and clasped his hands together in a praying gesture. “Come on, do it for me. I may never get this opportunity again, and I want nothing more than to spend the rest of my day with Lord Stanley’s Cup with my best friend, _the_ single most important person in my life, getting drunk on booze we drank out of the Cup and watching bad TV. Plus...not only me, but when are _you_ ever going to get to experience a day with the Cup again. If not for me, do it for the Canadian in you. Don’t make your motherland disown you.”

Oh no. Holster had gone for the kill and pulled the Canadian card. He rolled his eyes and acquiesced. “Okay. You win, bro. But if I get sick, you are responsible for taking care of my hungover ass,” he admonished, shaking a finger at him.

“I shall consider it a sacred duty, complete with all the snuggles you want. Now, if you will just have a seat, get comfy, I will bring refreshments.”

‘Refreshments’ meant a bag of Pizza Rolls, M&M’s, salt & vinegar potato chips, and the aforementioned beverage. Ransom eyed the red concoction warily. Pieces of fruit floated around in the bowl of the Cup from where it sat on Holster’s coffee table. In it, were two curly straws to aid in consumption. “I dunno. Are you sure- What’s in-”

“It’s sangria. I found a killer recipe online as part of a message on a hockey forum believe it or not. Has passionfruit, garnacha, blood oranges, apple, peaches, a splash of rose water and petals just for fun. I tried a little of it this morning when I put the stuff together. It’s so good, Rans. Like orgy in your mouth good”

“I don’t doubt that, but um... I’m a bit leery of consuming anything from that Cup.”

“There is a guy in charge of sanitizing this thing.” Holster shook his head with a chuckle and took a long drink from his straw. The satisfied moan he uttered was downright obscene and filled the room. “Oh my God. You _have_ to try some.”

“But, dude, Zimmermann took a crap in the cup as an infant...twice.”

“Hello? Sanitized. Come on, don’t tell me you’re too chicken.”

Ransom folded his arms across his chest. “’m not chicken. One of these days, I’m going to say no to your plans. But it is not this day.”

“Then here you go, my friend.” He waved the straw at him. “Drink up, me heartie.”

“Y’arr.”

 

***

 

Holster nuzzled into Ransom’s neck, his arms wrapped securely around him as they lay sprawled out on the couch, both of them in their underwear, their limbs a tangled mess. “I e’er tell you that you’re one beau’ful fucker?” Holster’s words were a bit slurred. Both of them had long passed the point of drunkenness.

Ransom’s hand, splayed on the bare skin of Holster’s back, began stroking soft circles along his spine. “Mmm. Think you have. Once, twice, maybe three and a half times.”

When he felt the damp press of lips to his neck, Ransom practically melted into it.

“Well ‘s true.”

“Not so bad yourself, y’know.”

Holster scoffed. “Sure. If ya say so, Ransypoo, you’re jus’tryin’ to make me feel better. Next to you, I’m just the giant, horse-toothed, awkward looking white guy. Ransy my darling, you are like a god, amazing Adonis carved from mahog’ny colored marble, pretty enough to make the gods weep.”

What? How could someone as lovely to look at as Holster not see it? “No, no. You’re the most beautiful man I’ve e’er seen, Holtzy.”

Holster pulled his face away from where it was buried in Ransom’s neck and beamed at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Y’know what else?”

Holster shook his head, and Ransom couldn’t stop himself from kissing his forehead.

“No, what?”

“I’m crazy about you, head over heels in love w’you.”

Without wasting even a moment, Holster surged forward and crashed their lips together, mumbling sweet nothings that were swallowed up by the kiss. Things like ‘Moon of my life, my sun and stars’ were said loud enough for Ransom to understand. If it were possible, they managed to tangle themselves together even tighter so not even a hair’s breadth separated them. Tumbling off the couch and onto the carpet fazed neither of them; they were too caught up in each other.

When elbows and backsides began to chafe with rug burn, they stumbled to their feet, bound for Holster’s bedroom, but even then, it took ages to make it down the hall. It seemed now that their feelings were out in the open there was nothing holding either of them back. Two steps here became a frenzied and yet tender shove into a wall there. Hands roamed over chiseled and sculpted skin, discovering the hard planes of the other’s body. Years of apparently mutual longing was too much for either of them to stop, and by the time they tumbled onto the bed, two chests heaved. Two hearts pounded out a heady samba, and they shook with overwhelming emotion.

Maybe it was the drink, that finally gave them courage to say what they’d each been holding back, or maybe it was just timing, but neither Ransom nor Holster cared. In that moment, they only had eyes and thoughts for each other.

 

***

 

“No, dude. I’m telling you, I have been standing outside Holster’s building for twenty fucking minutes. I have pressed the damn buzzer one hundred and thirty-seven times, Jack! No one is home,” Shitty snapped into the phone.

“Are you sure the party was today?”

Shitty rolled his eyes. “Yes, though if you ask me, it should have been yesterday, you know...his day with the Cup. Because fuck if I’m ever gonna have the opportunity to touch it again.”

“Hey! Uncool. I could win it; Chowder could win it, you know. Anyway, Bits and I just picked up our rental car. We’ll be there soon. Try giving him a call.” Jack hung up the phone.

“Try giving him a call,” Shitty mocked. “Zimmermann, you say that as if I hadn’t tried it already,” he said aloud… to no one except the squirrel on a nearby trashcan lid...the very same rodent who was currently giving him the stink-eye. He flipped it off, and instead of calling Holster, he tried Ransom, who answered on the third ring. “Brah, will one of you two giant dorks let me in? Remember the party Holtzy decided to throw? Yeah, according to the Wonder Woman party invitation I received, the festivities started half an hour ago.”

Ransom giggled--no joke. He legitimately fucking giggled--and buzzed him in without saying a word. By the time Shitty arrived to Holster’s front door on the tenth floor, he was damn near fuming. Whatever he was about to say however, died on his tongue when Holster answered the door wearing the largest smile Shitty had ever seen on the guy, and for a dude with teeth as large as Holster’s, it was a bit unnerving.

Not that Shitty would have said anything to him, because there was a cheerful flush high on his cheeks, a lightness in his posture that he couldn’t remember ever seeing in his misanthropic friend. Not to mention the prominent hickey he was sporting just under the hinge of his jaw. Well, someone certainly had fun recently.

Ransom came into the room, still giggling like he’d been huffing the Nos and wrapped him in a crushing hug. “Shitty, you beautiful hirsute bastard, I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for coming to the party!”

He managed a paltry hug in return, still a bit stunned for lack of a better word, just as more of their old team walked in the front door. He had to make sure he didn’t forget to thank Holster for flying everyone out here to celebrate his Cup with him and Ransom. Speaking of RansomHolster (he should just start using that combined moniker when referring to them, or something shorter, a portmanteau, Raster or Holsom, yeah that was good, because it wasn’t like any of the SMH bros ever saw just one of them at a time), they were more joined at the hip than usual. In fact…

Were they holding hands? And was that _also_ a hickey on Ransom’s throat? He must have missed that announcement in the team chat. And honestly, at this point it didn’t surprise him. He was just waiting for Holster and Ransom to get their acts together and call a spade a spade. They lived together and had a joint bank account for crying out loud (Shitty didn’t buy that ‘It’s for shared housing expenses and emergencies’ bullshit)!  

Not that it should be a surprise at all anyway, because just about everyone on the team was together at this point. Jack and Bitty, Dex and Whiskey, Nursey and Johnson (and what a mindfuck talking to those two had become since they became a couple. It was mind-blowing), Ollie and Wicks, him and Lardo. It seemed like Holster and Ransom were the only ones who were unattached. Even Tango had found love in a teammate. Chesty and him had been together for almost three years now. Farmer, of course, was an honorary teammate just like Lardo.

“Of course! We couldn’t miss celebrating Holster hoisting the cup now could we?” Chowder said.

Ransom’s face scrunched up in confusion. “What? No. This is our engagement party.”

Shitty dropped the beer Lardo had only moments before pressed into his hand, and it tumbled to the floor, spilling its contents on the carpet. No one bothered to clean it up. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold the fucking phone! You’re engaged since when?”

“Yesterday,” Ransom and Holster said in unison.

“But you sent the invitations to this shindig three weeks ago, plane tickets two weeks ago.” Jack’s accented English echoed out from somewhere behind Shitty. He hadn’t even noticed them arriving. How the fucking fast did they drive from the airport? Or was Jack’s idea of ‘just picked up the rental car’ more like ‘we’ll be there in ten’? It was probably the latter.

“No. This is our engagement party.”

Jack came to stand by Shitty. “I see. And how long have you two been together?”

“Since yesterday.” Holster tugged them into the kitchen. “Here, have some sangria. I made it myself. Me and Ransy, light of my life, my heart, the breath in my lungs, drank it from the cup last night. It was amazing.”

Ransom came up behind Holster and wrapped both arms around his waist. “My curly straw had sparkles.”

The guy was still giggling. High, Shitty reasoned, the dude was definitely high as a fucking space station.

Jack stopped dead in his tracks. “You drank this out of the cup?”

“Yep,” Holster said, letting the ‘p’ pop and fill the kitchen. “Wanna see the recipe?” He grabbed his phone and showed it to him. “See. Just look at it. It tastes as good as it sounds.”

Jack nodded, deep in thought before showing it to Shitty. Oh ho.

“You mean to tell us you found a drink recipe called Stanley’s Special Sincerity Sangria on a site called hockeymythsandlegends.com, and your first thought was ‘Hey, that sounds good. Let’s try that?’ Hey Jack, you thinking what I’m thinking?” Shitty asked as he stroked his mustache.

“Cup magic?”

“Cup magic indeed.”

Jack groaned and pulled out his phone and soon began chatting away in French. <<Papa, what do you know about Stanley’s Sangria?>>

A few minutes later, when Jack ended the call, he turned and addressed the room at large. “So, my dad says that there are stories about players, or their friends, family drinking this beverage out of the cup and strange things happening. Well, to be more accurate, he says legend has it, that the 4S cocktail is like a love potion.”

“Wait a minute, so like this cup juice mind whammied them into bed with each other? Or the very least making out with and getting engaged?”

Jack's expression remained blank. “No. It is more like a truth serum, gives you the courage to confess feelings of love that otherwise would remain hidden. It doesn’t make you do you don’t already want to. Anything they did while under the influence was something they _both_ wanted.”

Shitty rubbed the back of his neck. “Well that’s comforting. I was ready to be outraged on their behalf. So, what you’re saying is…”

Lardo pointed at Ransom and Holster who were back on the couch, practically in each other’s laps, their level of PDA, getting a little too heated for an audience. “Those two dorks were hopelessly in love with each other and neither knew it.”

“Yeah, and anyway, my dad said it only lasts about 36 hours. So, they should be themselves by morning.”

The group was just about to congratulate the happy couple when a pair of boxers flew over the back of the couch, hitting Dex in the chest.

“And that, brahs, is our cue to leave. Dinner’s on Zimmermann,” Shitty announced before yelling ‘Get it, Rans!’ on his way out the door.

 

***

 

Holster rolled over in bed and groaned, sporting the worst headache of his life to date. How much did they have to drink yesterday? He wasn’t sure. To be honest, the day was a bit of a blur. He handed off the Cup, remembered that much. There were flashes of his friends in there and dinner with Ransom, and shopping for… Oh shit.

He looked down at his hand, where a rose gold band adorned his left ring finger. Sparing a glance over his shoulder, he found Ransom fast asleep on his stomach, arms curled around the pillow. He, too, sported a similar ring on his left hand. Holster rubbed his forehead, trying to recall details of the day before. It was jarring to not remember the better part of a whole day.

However, he could honestly say that waking up next to Ransom with the pair of them apparently engaged...or married (oh God, had he managed to get married and not remember the damn ceremony? What was his life?), was an experience he didn’t regret in the least. Not one bit. Not at all.

In fact, it was the most perfect sensation he’d ever felt in his life.

Beside him, Ransom stirred, before his eyelids fluttered open. There was a brief moment of confusion that crossed his face (just long enough for Holster to have a flash of panic) before it slipped away into a sleepy smile. “Hey, you.”

“Hey.” How was he supposed to break the ice here?

Ransom stretched his stiff limbs and looked back at Holster. “Holtzy, I had the best dream last night.”

Holster raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh?”

Suddenly, Ransom looked, dare he say it, bashful. “Yeah. I want to tell you about it, but you gotta promise me you won’t get weird about it, that you won’t get mad at me and you’ll still be my best friend.”

He took a deep breath. “If the dream involved us perhaps getting engaged and/or married, then it wasn’t a dream.”

Ransom blinked at him a few times, his eyes wide and strigine. “It...it wasn’t?”

Holster shook his head, reaching out his hand about to cup Ransom’s cheek before stopping and pulling back. To his surprise, Ransom caught Holster’s hand and brought it to his lips. “Good.”

A surprised cackle burst from Holster’s mouth. “Yeah? Really, you- Us...yeah?”

“How eloquent, Adam.”

His breath caught in his throat. His name had never sounded so right on someone else’s tongue before. He didn’t dare stop himself this time when he surged forward to kiss Ransom, making sure to call him Justin and motek at least once.

Several minutes of frenzied passion passed before they broke apart at the sound of Holster’s phone pinging on the nightstand. With a groan, he rolled over and looked to see fifty-seven missed calls, two hundred texts, and eleven thousand notes on Twitter.

Brief flashes of selfies and kisses and...oh holy fuck.

All the blood in his face fled in an instant. He couldn’t even look at them, instead choosing to hand the phone to Ransom, whose fingers traced in the lock pattern on his phone as if it was nothing. But then, they knew almost everything about each other. Their blood types, Ransom’s O positive to his B negative. They were each other’s medical proxy, knew what each would want in the event of a major, incapacitating health crisis . How they took their coffee...he was getting ahead of himself. But that was the sort of thing his mind did when panicking. It picked mundane details and information to recite in an effort to center himself.

“So, um...You may have tweeted a selfie last night of me kissing you on the cheek and us showing off our rings. You may also have captioned it, ‘I can’t wait to marry my best friend and love of my life.’. And by may, I mean you did. You absolutely did. And, there are three missed calls from your team manager, a text from the Schooners’ PR team, expressing their support but regretting you didn’t give them a heads up on your coming out. They have, however, wholeheartedly welcomed me to the Schooners family, stating the wives and girlfriends group will be renamed something catchy. Your mother is a bit upset you didn’t you could tell them that one, you weren’t straight and two that you and I were seriously dating, or dating at all for that matter. Oh, and your sisters are fighting over who gets to be your maid of honor.”

Holster peered over at him from under the arm he’d thrown over his face. “And?”

“Well, a lot of people mentioned you in social media posts. Response is overwhelmingly positive. So that’s good. But um...”

He watched ransom’s eyebrows rise high on his forehead. “What?”

“Schooners’ legal team has contacted Seattle PD and wants you to notify them of any further death threats.”

Holster rolled onto his stomach and buried his face in his pillow. “Why… do people have to be such assholes?”

Ransom moved so that he was lying on his back, kissing his shoulder. “Because they’re jealous.”

After a moment, Holster wiggled out from under him, kissed Ransom on the forehead and got out of bed.

“Don’t tell me you’re regretting it already.”

Holster levelled him with a smile. “Never. I only regret it took me so long to tell you and even then, I needed Cup magic to do it. ” He pulled on some clothes, grabbed his glasses, and made himself look presentable. Then, he took his phone into the living room, Ransom following close behind. Holster sat on the bench in front of his baby grand. He handed the phone to Ransom. “Do the honors?”

Ransom nodded and pressed record.

He waved to the camera. “Hi, everyone. It’s Adam, though many of you know me better as Holster. I haven’t had time to go through them all yet, but I wanted to thank you all for your wishes of solidarity and support.” He noticed Ransom waving at him to get his attention. He waited for Ransom to press pause before asking, “What?”

“You came out, Holtzy.”

“Yeah. I know. So?”

“You came out, and six other players in both college and hockey posted messages of their own, coming out. They thanked you for giving them the courage.”

“But I didn’t come out. My tweet says I’m marrying you. Nowhere does it say, ‘Hey world, guess what. I, Adam Birkholtz, Schooner’s assistant captain, most recent Conn Smythe recipient, Calder Trophy runner up, and two time Norris Trophy winner, am bisexual!’ Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“Well, maybe you should have. Look, for all the men that have come out in North American major professional sports...you’re sort of high profile. Maybe the highest. That’s a big deal.”

He went back to his recording. “I’m honored that my spur of the moment tweet, because I was just so damn happy, gave some of my fellow players courage to do the same. I am sure, the way things are in the world, that if I were to wade through all the messages and comments around the web, I will find my share of negative backlash. I’m not going to address it at all, and this is going to be my only public statement on it for awhile at least. Yes, I’m getting married. Yes, it’s to another man. No, I will not expand on that further. I hope that one day, instead of an engagement announcement between a couple of the same gender being met with commentary on how historic it might be, it will be met with congratulations for the happy couple, and will be left at that.”

In hindsight, the piano bench was not the most comfortable seat from which to film. “Because… I know there are a good share of negative responses to my announcement,” he ran a hand through his hair, “and to that I say, try it. Try achieving the highest level of success possible in your career and while the rest of your colleagues are kissing their wives or their girlfriends, you have to settle for giving the most important person in your life an awkward one-armed bro hug and a fist bump.”

He could feel the cracks beginning to form in his resolve. This bit, he was about to say right here? This was the hard part, the notion that kept him scared and alone all these years. It was truly terrifying to air his true feelings about how much it hurt to hide. He licked his lips. “The thing people don't tell you about being in the closet is that when you spend so long, so much of your energy keeping your love secret and hiding such a big part of who you are, you start to believe the lie of a persona you present to the world.”

He sighed. “See, what happens is you start to doubt who you are, not recognize the person in the mirror. It gets to you, the way the world says being the way you are isn’t real. That having a broader definition to whom you might find attractive makes you greedy, incapable of being faithful to one partner, that your past partners, opposite sex partners are merely stepping stones to being entirely one way as opposed to the truth. It needles its way under your skin and finds your self esteem. It colors the way you see yourself until you wonder if you still exist at all, ‘cause surely, if the way you feel and who you like isn’t actually possible, then you surely can’t be real either.”

There were tears in his eyes, and rather than wipe them away, he blinked a few times. He would not let himself cry on camera. “That's the closet story you rarely hear. People seldom tell you how it destroys them to give someone their whole heart, love them with everything they have, but have to pretend their partner doesn't exist the moment they walk out their front door. Try living like that for even a week, and see if it doesn't change you.”

Holster’s fingers were trembling in his lap, and nothing he did would still them in that moment. “The thing is, I'm still the same person I was two days ago. So, for those of  you who've voiced your support, I, once again thank you for your kind words and thoughts.” He pressed stop and uploaded the video to his Youtube account, before linking it to his Twitter and sending it to his team’s PR department.

“Do you really feel like that? Like you have stopped existing and are only a cardboard cutout of who we think Holster actually is?”

Now that the camera was off, Holster let the tears welled up in his eyes spill over. “Sometimes,” he said with a nod. “If I hadn't been so afraid of how the world would react, I would have told you that night before graduation when the two of us were alone out in the reading room. You know, when we just lay back and watched the stars for over an hour? I would have said there was never going to be someone else I loved the way I loved you. We could have six years of ‘us by now, Rans’.  I mean, for crying out loud, Jack and Bitty have been married for three years and no one really knows. There was no way I could do that with you. I didn't want to hide you, not then, not ever. I’d rather have gone my whole life as just your friend rather than keep you a secret, but in my head...you were mine and I yours, even if it was just pretend.”

Ransom took a few steps forward, slotting himself between his knees. Then, he took Holster’s face in both hands, wiping away the tears with this thumbs. “Better late than never, eh?”

“Yeah.”

He kissed Holster’s forehead. “So that’s that. Now for the real scary part.”

“Calling our families?”

“Yep. Sounds terrifying.”

“Bring it on,” Holster said with a wet laugh and hugged Ransom tighter.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> come visit me on [Tumblr](http://secretgeniusshittyknight.tumblr.com/) and gush about Holsom with me.


End file.
